Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Reflections...

Chil’ren, we have a lot to cover.

Do They Have a Hallmark Card for this Shit?Newsweek has apologized for and retracted the published story about an alleged incident in which U.S. soldiers flushed the Quran down a toilet during an interrogation. Newsweek has been falling on their editorial sword for several days now. After a certain point all this horse beating gets tired. Having said that, a bitch was fascinated by the following…

Where are the reporters/journalists/whatever they call themselves these days? Michael Isikoff and John Berry must have the best fucking P.R. hacks in the business, because their names have been omitted for almost all of the news items about this story. Seems only Newsweek is willing to name names, which should earn them a reprieve from this beating.

The blurb in the May 9 issue of Newsweek was not the reason Muslims took to the streets. The blurb and the subsequent reporting about it may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. It’s about nuance, kids. Oh, and a general understanding that the Islamic world has had enough of our shit.

The Rumsfeld quote relating to this matter was an absolute stunner. Something like “People need to be careful about what they say.” Don’t you love that? Rummy, your irony takes my breath away! Still Rumsfeldian after all these years...

Some other nitwit said something like “A certain journalistic standard needs to be met.” Yeah, but you weren’t saying that shit when they were knee deep in your "build up to war" bullshit, were you?

And finally, is the story wrong or was it poorly sourced? Opps! That's a question. My bad!

On to Mexico!A bitch did read about the unfortunate remarks made by President Vicente Fox of Mexico. Having lived in Texas for many years, I was concerned that this would spark up the strange inter-brown struggles that plague cities in the Southwest. A bitch loves her brown brothers and sisters, so let's not start burning shit down over some bullshit.

To clarify for Mr. Fox, most blacks in the United States trace our heritage back to slavery. We did not choose to come here and our relatives worked shit jobs for no pay for over 100 years. Having paid our dues we now seek some fucking advancement, which our second-generation immigrant brown brothers and sisters should well understand. If we did want to work hard labor jobs with no health insurance for below minimum wage, I'd have to renounce my angry black membership. Having said that, I do understand why folks are flooding over the border. A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing; that's why our people made for Canada back in the day!

A bitch was disappointed, but not surprised. What did surprise me was that no one turned the tables back on President Fox.

Hey asshole! Instead of bitching about our immigration policy try building an economy at home. You know...Mexico? This bitch doesn't think you have a damned thing to be proud of when your citizens are fleeing north and all you can do is bitch about how slow the fucking line is at the border.

11 comments:

I gotta say though, on the Fox thing, that perhaps some Black folks need to start acting like they want to work. No, nobody wants to clean a toilet, and yes, we did whether we wanted to or not, but when the hell do we move on? We're supposed to take advantage of our emancipation, and far too many of us ignored the memo that said the 40 acres & a mule ain't comin', so go to plan B. Yes, Fox needs to do something about Mexico's economy, but at least Mexicans aren't coming here on vacation, paid for with a credit card at its limit, and no real plan for paying that shit off, but we're runnin' to Cancun (which ain't even really Mexico; it's more like far west Miami). I'm not sure Fox needs to be vilified because he told the truth. Read this article in the NY Daily News for a context:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/307401p-263016c.html.

We SHOULD be mad because like mama said, nobody is supposed to come up in ya house and tell you it's dirty. You know it's dirty, but a muthafucka don't need to tell you. Or maybe they should so you'll clean yo shit up.

PREACH about Mexicans leaving their country to find oportunity. It did warm my heart to know that were not the only country that is being run by a moron... Speaking of morons...

Ummm?!?! WTF!?!?! What black folks do YOU know not wanting to work??? I mean who wants to be seen a sucess in life, not the race that has been stomped on the whole of they're existence on this contenent, Im sure.. Talk about not telling someone their house is dirty... If you reference the ABB archives, and thousands of other liturature on the subject, the only reason Black folks are seen as lazy, is b/c they have painted by the media and old white repubulic white men as such. And credit ... please tell me your not blaming credit either, the system that was installed and subsequently been used to keep the colored folks out of the running?!?! I mean God forbid we go on vacation after scrubbing toilets.

"Ummm?!?! WTF!?!?! What black folks do YOU know not wanting to work???"

How about the people who act as though you're inconveniencing them b/c you place an order, make a purchase, or ask a question? God has blessed you richly if you've never encountered these folks.

" I mean who wants to be seen a sucess in life, not the race that has been stomped on the whole of they're existence on this contenent, Im sure.."No disagreement there, but how long do we hold on to this? Surely, if you pick a scab, will the wound heal properly?

"Talk about not telling someone their house is dirty... If you reference the ABB archives, and thousands of other liturature on the subject, the only reason Black folks are seen as lazy, is b/c they have painted by the media and old white repubulic white men as such."Okay, I haven't read the archives, but I'm not convinced ABB is suggesting that we don't play a part in our own portrayal. Read her post on the young'uns and their inappropriate behavior. She's talking about her experience. Fuck the media. That's part of the fucking problem, too many muthafuckas tryin' to live some MTV Cribs life. And please tell me if you want to hire a gum-crackin' loud-talkin', tight jeans wearin, or worse dirty braids-havin, ill mannered so-and-so to represent you? I didn't say all of us are bad, but some of the most vocal aren't saying the best things. "And credit ... please tell me your not blaming credit either, the system that was installed and subsequently been used to keep the colored folks out of the running?!?! I mean God forbid we go on vacation after scrubbing toilets."Hold up. I'm goin' on vacation, but after I finished scrubbing the toilet, made sure my rent was paid, and my kids were fed. Don't blame the existence of credit for its abuse. That's like saying a pussy exists for fucking whether or not it wants to be fucked. You're not saying that, are you, m'dear?

Anyone following the Boondocks cartoon strip for the last few weeks would be drawing a lot of conclusions to all of this about the media and the perceptions.

In Boondocks, one of the kids decided he was going to do a marathon of t.v. watching so that he could do his own study on his observation that the only blacks he sees on t.v. are sports and rap stars grimacing and sweating.

IMHO the only reason why you don't see more t.v. shows like the Fresh Prince of BelAir or The Cosby Show is because it's not really a money maker. It's much more lucrative to exploit black rappers and sports stars, and in the end doing a great disservice to a large majority of the black demographic who are hard working, educated people, maintaining nuclear families and not buying into the same type of "black-sploitation" which happened in the movies of the 1970s.

The unfortunate shit with this is, for whatever the reason, a lot of kids now are growing up in single parent households, for the most part SIGNIFICANTLY unsupervised, watching entirely too much violent t.v. and watching trashy, over-sexualized, violent rap videos, thinking that is the be all and end all, the alpha and the omega of who they should grow up to become.

And I agree, that some of the most-vocal aren't saying or emulating the best things.

As far as injecting some hyperbole here, the Mexicans running north of the border for a better life is in a sense the same type of desperation that some Palestinians endure, however rather than running elsewhere after the Palestinians have been disenfranchised, dispossessed of their homes and livelihoods, they're strapping bombs to their bodies. It's a colossal cry for help, and rather than truly help these people, their governments gets bogged down in other shit.

The flack over the Newsweek item seems so fishy. ABB, you said it right. The protests weren't over the dinky little news item, but over American policies in the Middle East and this illegal, immoral war. What I don't get is, why aren't the news media outlets following up on this story? Not the Newsweek stuff, but the real reasons for the riots.

First off, the riots were supposed to be sparked by the story of the defamation of the Koran. But this doesn't match the protesters' reasons for protesting. Many of them said that they were upset over the war in Iraq, and that they were upset over the rise in violence between the US and the Taliban. (I got that from the BBC.) Secondly, how did a news item from an American magazine make it to Afghanistan, be translated so that the Afghan students can understand it, then enrage the students enough to set off a riot in the middle of peaceful protest? That's pretty powerful for a news item that was, perhaps, four sentences long.

So I'm just saying what ABB just said. It's easier for this administration to blame Newsweek and its tiny, flawed story than to accept that the people in Afghanistan have had enough of the Americans.